This is a little bit of a venting post

Hey, friends, this is Dr. Nicole. I wanted to jump on here live and have a conversation with you about the huge controversy that's blowing up in the publishing community. I don't know if you heard about it, and I think it's really important to talk about it and the implications of what's going on. And so I'll bring you up to speed, and I would love to hear your thoughts and feelings about it. And so, in essence, what happened is this. Debut author Kate Coriander was caught creating a bunch of fake accounts on Goodreads, and she was bombing other people's pages at the same time, she was boosting her own Goodreads profile, and she ended up getting caught. And so then when she got caught, she created a lie that a friend was doing all of this and it wasn't her. And of course she got caught with that. And the reason that I'm jumping onto this conversation is because I think it's really important to talk about the explanation that she gave for this behavior. And the reason that she said that this all happened, if you look at her confession on her Instagram, was because she had changed a medication. And then her mental health issues came to the forefront and as a result of her mental health issues of anxiety, depression, and addiction, that it caused her to engage in behavior where she was profiling pockets, writers, debut authors. And I think it's really important to actually have a conversation about the implications of this kind of an explanation and to have an implication of my behavior is because of my mental health concerns, where this is essentially scapegoating mental health, where I think it's really important that if we have anxiety or if we have addiction or if we have depression, is to. To honor and acknowledge that. But what we don't want to do is use that as an explanation for our behavior, because then what ends up happening is that individuals in the mental health community, whether I'm an anxiety sufferer or you're a depression warrior, or somebody else has post traumatic stress disorder, if we have people in the community saying, well, because I'm anxious, I engaged in racist behaviors, then suddenly everybody else whose anxiety is then looked at by the community with a critical eye of, oh, anxiety can cause this. But what really actually happened is she was in some sort of a trigger and she made really bad choices and she got caught. And so what I want to encourage us to do is when things come up, when we have symptoms, when we have trauma triggers or whatever it is, is to honor and acknowledge whatever's coming up for us. And then we need to be accountable for what we do in response to that. And so I think people are really upset about it because she wasn't holding herself accountable. She was like, this is my anxiety. I couldn't help it. And now I'm doing something. I'm sorry. And instead, things that we could be doing is make sure that you have a crisis plan in place and is, do you have a good counselor or somebody that you can trust? And if you're feeling really insecure or upset or triggered or activated, whatever it is, is to talk to somebody about how you're feeling and hold yourself accountable to that and not blaming the. The diagnosis and not blaming the symptoms that you're having. I think it's really important to hold yourself accountable to growing, but also to not then categorize other people as like, this is something that happens when someone's anxious. And so part of this huge controversy that's come up is being expounded by the fact that we have people who are being marginalized in not only the way that she was targeting the other authors, specifically, it appeared, but also targeting the mental health community with her explanations. And so I just really felt compelled to get on here and to just kind of debunk a couple of myths. And so, number one is that anxiety and depression don't make us behave in bad or inappropriate ways. It can make us have bigger feelings. It can amplify what we're thinking. It can. Can trigger us and make it a lot less clear. But we are always accountable for the choices that we make. And so we. We don't want to bypass that. Right. And so that's really important. And then to hold other people in your life accountable for that. And so if you have somebody in your life who's like, well, I can't do this because I'm depressed is. Okay, honor that. Notice that, and then figure out ways that we can be accountable to making small changes or helping them be accountable to making small changes. And so what do you think about this? Have you heard about this controversy? What's coming up for you? I would love to have a conversation about how we, as a community of individuals who have an amygdala and the limbic system, how we can better show up in this world honoring other people who struggle with mental health conditions while still being accountable. Right. So I would love to hear what you think. And so leave a comment and tell me what your perspectives are, and I will see you later. I love you all. Thanks for being here.